Robotaxis are proving they can offer driverless services in certain cities, as a means of accessible and modern public transport. IDTechEx states in its latest report, “Autonomous Vehicles Market 2025-2045: Robotaxis, Autonomous Cars, Sensors“, that testing is taking place worldwide, with the most commercial deployment happening in China currently. The report explores the commercial readiness of various players and vehicles, whilst also covering safety evaluations and challenges within the market.
IDTechEx looks closely at California’s autonomous vehicle testing data, which is gathered from multiple companies, and made up of the number of miles driven by registered vehicles each year. In 2023, IDTechEx reports that 9 million miles were logged across the state. Key leaders in this commercial autonomous vehicle and robotaxi space are Waymo, having submitted half of all the miles recorded in California to date, and Cruise, which, although accounted for 30% of these miles, has recently been shut down.
MPD, collisions and benchmarking robotaxis
Miles per disengagement (MPD) measures how many miles an autonomous vehicle can go before the need for a safety driver intervention, which may be because the car overlooks an object in the road or makes a wrong manoeuvre. Average MPD across all autonomous vehicles currently in use has increased greatly and is growing exponentially. MPD currently stands at hundreds of thousands of miles, a distance so great it would take a human driver over a decade to cover. While not all disengagements may cause collisions, however, robotaxis are still capable of having collisions, with or without safety drivers behind the wheel.
Comparing autonomous vehicles to human drivers can prove difficult, as it must be evaluated whether there is a collision rate for autonomous vehicles that is ‘acceptable’ to proceed with, regardless of how low it may be, and when a car is deemed safe enough. Having a particularly advanced or perfect human driver as a benchmark may be a solution, but the data needed to determine this may not be sufficient. Factors to consider with human drivers could include aggressive driving and road rage, which do not apply to self-driving robotaxis.
In the US, drivers may be in a collision approximately once every 200,000 miles, with this rate doubling in busier cities. IDTechEx reports that in 2023, the top three robotaxi testing companies, excluding Cruise, averaged 86,000 miles before disengagement, predicting that in 2025 robotaxis can be expected to overtake human performance. Currently, Waymo’s autonomous vehicle data shows that their vehicles may be safer on the roads when compared to cars with humans behind the wheel, reporting 84% fewer airbag deployments over 22 million miles and 73% fewer injury-causing crashes than the average human driver.
The leading robotaxi company
Waymo, the leading player in the US, introduced The Early Rider program in Phoenix for people to try out the service, which in 2020 was then followed by a commercial service to the public. By 2022, Waymo was offering rides from the airport into the city center. The company began operating in LA in 2023 while becoming more prominent in Phoenix and San Fransisco, and has expanded further over the last year, with plans to move to Atlanta and Austin in 2025, demonstrating the capabilities and fast uptake of robotaxi services in cities where it is feasible to deploy them. Waymo stated that the company makes 150,000 paid trips over 1 million miles of fully autonomous driving per week, with IDTechEx expecting this figure to grow in the coming years.
Deployments and market predictions
IDTechEx reports that China is one of the most prominent regions for robotaxi operations, with commercial deployment of robotaxis in 6 cities and testing in 2 others. This popularity of robotaxis continues to expand internationally. The US has commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles in three states, with plans for two more to begin deployment and testing in over 20 cities. Testing is also happening in France, Germany, the UK, and Japan, with Germany expecting commercial deployment in 2025, and Japan from 2026.
Despite widespread deployment having not yet been achieved by robotaxi companies, many players are still operating in various stages of readiness. Many are still in early testing or operating in single-location commercial deployments, while many others are deployed in multiple locations.
Visit IDTechEx’s report, www.IDTechEx.com/AutoVehicles, for the latest information on robotaxi deployment predictions and market stats.
For the full portfolio of autonomy market research available from IDTechEx, please see www.IDTechEx.com/Research/Autonomy.
About IDTechEx
IDTechEx provides trusted independent research on emerging technologies and their markets. Since 1999, we have been helping our clients to understand new technologies, their supply chains, market requirements, opportunities and forecasts. For more information, contact [email protected] or visit www.IDTechEx.com.
